Working Paper No. 10, the Epic Rise and Subtle Fall of American Herbalism

Portland State University PDXScholar Working Papers in Economics Economics 12-15-2018 Working Paper No. 10, The Epic Rise and Subtle Fall of American Herbalism Julia Schweid Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/econ_workingpapers Part of the Economic History Commons, and the Economic Theory Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Citation Details Schweid, Julia. "The Epic Rise and Subtle Fall of American Herbalism, Working Paper No. 10", Portland State University Economics Working Papers. 10. (15 March 2018) i + 15 pages. This Working Paper is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Working Papers in Economics by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. The Epic Rise and Subtle Fall of American Herbalism Working Paper No. 10 Authored by: Julia Schweid A Contribution to the Working Papers of the Department of Economics, Portland State University Submitted for: EC456, “American Economic History” 15 December 2018; i + 15 pages Prepared for Professor John Hall Abstract: This inquiry seeks to establish that we can track the development and evolution of herbalism as the initial form of medicine in American economic history. Upon colonization of North America, the indigenous people generously shared their knowledge of plant medicine with the settlers from Europe. The indigenous knowledge combined with the translation of ancient herbal texts created a synthesis of understanding and an important form of cultural exchange. People then began making attempts to standardize the medicine and its potency was compromised with the rise of the industry in patent medicine, or what I have named pseudo herbalism. It was soon revealed that harmful compounds such as cocaine and opium were previously being labeled as cure-alls and marketed under the guise of natural medicine. This created a distrust between people and their own knowing, and as the germ theory began to rise in popularity, people relinquished their self-sufficiency in terms of their health to become completely reliant on modern medical practices. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Codes: I110, I120, I140, Z1 Key Words: Commodification, Germ Theory of Disease, Herbalism, Holistic, Indigenous, Infectious Disease, Patent Medicine, Small Pox, Socio-cultural This inquiry seeks to establish that we can track the development and evolution of herbalism as the initial form of medicine in American economic history. Dating all the way back to prehistoric times, plants and herbs have been used as medicine throughout the entirety of the world, in some places with more prevalence than others. Although here in the United States the medical system has shifted away from using whole plants, and instead attempts to mimic certain constituents in a biochemical fashion as a form of symptomatic relief, many parts of the world still rely solely on herbal medicine to support their mental, physical, and spiritual health. Various forms of medicine employed in the United States contain an herbal component, and while these types of medicine are now classified as ‘alternative’, modern western medicine that uses pharmaceutical drugs over herbal methods did not arise until the 19th century. Towards a History of Herbal Medicine The history of herbal medicine is closely tied to the history and evolution of diet, as there is convergence in the medicinal use of spices with antimicrobial properties before access to modern methods of food storage and preparation. Today the United States is among the largest importer and consumer of spices, according to Kathy Kelly in “Herb and Spice History” (2017), from the year 1990-1994 an average of 530 million pounds of spices were imported into the United States, valued at a total of $372 million. The use of herbs as medicine dates back far beyond the written history of the world, but there is a somewhat clear, although non-linear path of development of this type of medicine in the United States. There are many records of medicinal herbs from Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, India, Greece, and Rome, and once a port for the spice trade was established, herbs and spices began flooding into Europe. Fast forward to the 16th and 17th centuries, where there was a renewed interest in botany, and a profound improvement in translation of ancient herbal texts, and this interest naturally spread to America through colonization. Herbalism and the Indigenous Indigenous people of North America were practicing herbalism far before Europeans began to colonize the land, but many of their remedies and modes of healing were not recorded in writing. While some of the knowledge regarding herbs and other natural healing modalities was lost when elders and medicine men and women passed away, much of the information was passed down orally and is still practiced by many people today, both native and non-native. In the oral traditions it is said that much of the knowledge about medicinal plants that the Native’s developed came from observing wildlife around them. According to Marlene Adelmann in “The Herbal Healing Practice of Native Americans” (2013), the natives would watch the animals experiment with the plants and herbs to heal themselves. As the European settlers began to migrate to North America, the indigenous people were generous in sharing their knowledge of herbal medicine. An illustrative example of this is when in the 16th century French explorer Jacques Cartier and his team became very sick from what we now know has scurvy, and 25 of the men died. Soon after, Jacques Cartier met with Dom Agaya, a native, who had previously been ill with the same disease, although he quickly regained his health. Cartier inquired about how Agaya had healed himself as he thought the illness was an undeniably fatal condition, which is when Agaya shared the Iroquois remedy of a tea containing juniper bark and needles. The French began to use this remedy and those that were still alive rapidly recovered. It becomes clear that the transfer of herbal knowledge was an important aspect of cultural exchange, quite literally it was health or illness, life or death in many of the earliest recorded interactions. Although there is a large gap in the literature regarding specifics of the herbal aspect of cultural exchange, we can infer that the colonizers relied upon the medical knowledge of the indigenous people, as they were the experts in healing, since they had no other options. This creates a unique sociocultural and economic dynamic between indigenous people and settlers, one which has not been explored in depth because of the lack of available information. While there is a gap in the details of knowledge transfer between the natives and the settlers, there is a strong history regarding specific herbal remedies employed by the indigenous people. A key aspect of their healing practice is the innately and intimately interwoven nature of mind, body, spirit, and earth. In current times, this holistic approach to medicine remains largely ignored by western doctors. Ignoring continues even though quantitative, and data based studies suggest of an undeniable yet sometimes elusive link between physical and emotional health. The earth component of this can be interpreted as the environment that the person exists within, and if they feel connected to that environment in any way. The natives understood this connection to mean that a physical illness or disease had an equally spiritual, or in other words non-physical component to it. This concept is the foundation for how indigenous people go about treating themselves or their loved ones, with the intention for the plant to interact with the entirety of the person on a metaphysical level. Although this has been lost in mainstream medicine in the West, this idea of metaphysical roots of illness or dis-order is still very much alive in Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, and vitalist herbalism. Like herbalism, Chinese medicine and Ayurveda are ancient practices, and it becomes clear that medicine started as a holistic endeavor, and reductionist philosophy has minimized modern medicine to focus solely on the physical. A similarity between herbalism of indigenous people and other forms of holistic medicine is the idea that the body contains a vital life force and any medicines employed should strengthen and support this life force. Another key component of the herbalism used by indigenous people is the idea that when plants are used there is a sacred communication between the innate intelligence of the body, and the innate wisdom of the plants. They believed that the spirit of the person and the spirit of the plant interact to form a reciprocal, co- creative experience to facilitate healing. When the reductionist view of the world and mechanistic philosophy of the body began to arise, people began to question and even invalidate the intuitive nature of this kind of medicine, as it is often something that is beyond quantitative measurement when the scope is beyond the physical. While the indigenous people kept this mystery alive, others lost it, by a means of colonization of the soul. Herbal traditions of the early United States were birthed as a synthesis of knowledge from the indigenous people and the European settlers. The translation of herbal texts into the English language and the spread of these texts to colonial America marked the initial beginning of the herbal industry. Nicolas Culpeper, an English herbalist, wrote many herbal books of his own after translating medical texts from ancient Greek and Latin. During the English Civil War, when the College of Physicians was unable to enforce their ban on the publication of medical texts, Culpeper chose to publish his translations in vernacular English for those who could not afford the help of physicians.

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